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PS4: This Looks Familiar

It’s no secret that the console-gaming business hasn’t exactly been setting the world on fire of late. IDC says that as of January Sony’s PS3 (77 million sold) surpassed Microsoft’s Xbox 360 (at 76 million). But the consoles were introduced in 2006 and 2005 respectively, and not a lot of those sales have come lately. Today’s announcement of the PS4 — Sony’s next-generation console — comes after the longest period between product introductions in the history of the videogame industry. It’s the struggling Japanese giant’s latest, best hope to recapture some of the magic that vaulted it to the top when the original Playstation launched in 1994. But is it too late to matter?

First, let’s get some praise out of the way. The technical capabilities of PS4 look terrific. (The machine itself? Who knows. In a two-hour event Sony never did manage to display a Ps4!) Sony showed off plenty of demos at the introduction and I have no doubt some of the finished product will be state-of-the-art console gaming. Additionally, the company is saying all the right things about online gaming and using their handheld Vita as a “client” device to the PS4, giving Sony similar capabilities to what Nintendo has delivered with its recently introduced Wii U.

But the Wii U is kind of a bust, setting the wrong kind of records for console sales (as in record lows). That’s especially troublesome for a new product. And while Sony is unlikely to do the same kind of face-first fall that Nintendo has, it’s worth remembering that in the last round the winning console was, in fact, Nintendo’s Wii, which recently surpassed the 100 million mark. Nintendo won for two primary reasons (1) it had the first-of-its-kind Wii Remote controller, which allowed you to do things like swing a virtual tennis racket through the air or pretend to bowl and (2) largely as a result of that controller it reached a number of people who weren’t traditional gamers, both young and old.

Wii, in short, was revolutionary and both Sony and Microsoft had to react. Sony’s Move controller was a knockoff. Microsoft’s Kinect, while imperfect, was a revelation: control without any controller at all. Watching today’s PS4 announcement, one couldn’t help but wonder where the equivalent of Kinect was. What’s the one feature that’s going to get people to run out and buy PS4; that’s going to reignite interest in console gaming? It simply wasn’t there.

Instead, we saw a lot of game developers showing unfinished demos and Sony touting as one of its big “gets” that Blizzard Entertainment, part of gaming giant Activision, will bring the hugely popular Diablo III to the PS4. Of course, they’ll also bring it to the aging PS3. Oh, and Diablo 3 is hugely popular because it’s already been available on PC and Mac since last May. This isn’t something new, it’s something kind of nice. And something “kind of nice” is actually where the center of gaming has moved in the past couple of years.

Which brings us back to that second Nintendo success factor: more people are gaming than ever. It’s just that now they’re just doing it on smartphones and iPads. Phenomena like Angry Birds and Words with Friends may not have the spectacular graphics of a PS4 game, but they have sometimes hundreds of millions of players worldwide. And the commitment can be as little as downloading an ad-supported app to your phone while waiting on line at the DMV. For Activision, which owns blockbusters like the Call of Duty franchise (a single title makes hundreds of millions) and the aging but still very profitable World of Warcraft multi-player game (with 10 million people paying a monthly subscription), this trend hasn’t been especially important. For everyone else in gaming, including struggling Zynga, it has been.

So while PS4 looks cool, it looks a lot like a better PS3, without a killer feature like the BluRay drive that helped bring the previous console into many homes the last time around. The controller isn’t especially exciting and the online capabilities are mostly a refinement of what you can already get. In the meantime, the barbarians are already in people’s pockets and purses and are threatening the living room, too. A startup called Ouya raised more than $10 million on Kickstarter to create a new console that will play Android games and promises to come out with a new model every year for $99. (Sony didn’t announce pricing). They launch this June with a slate of 500 games. Maybe they won’t all be Diablo 3, but then you’ll probably be able to pick up 30 of them for less than the cost of one Ps4 title.

Apple also looms in the background. The iPhone is especially successful with casual gamers and the co-founder of online gaming company Valve thinks Apple could “roll the console guys really easily” using a device like the AppleTV as the way into the living room. Whether that’s in the offing, the reality is that competition for people’s dollars is high, with options like tablets not existing a few years ago. And competition for attention spans is even higher thanks to app stores, Facebook games, Netflix, and endless-channel television. PS4 might be technically great. But great might not be good enough.

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I agree. I tried to read it through but after “you’ll probably be able to pick up 30 of them for less than the cost of one Ps4 title” I just couldnt finish the last paragraph. I can’t speak for anyone but myself still im sure most Forbes readers prefer quality over quantity.

Jeffrey, I’m with you on “quality over quantity”. But while I still pay for cable to get 8-10 channels, there’s a generation raised on YouTube that probably never will. I think there’s a market of serious gamers that isn’t going away; it’s just not as large as the market of everyone else.

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The fact that whe they announced the specs and that it’s pretty much a gaming Laptop in a Console case with locked down games unlike a normal Windows 8 Laptop does not help matters either. Weaker and cheaper console always won the most sales. NES inferior to Master System. SNES inferior to Neo Geo, PS1 inferior to N64, PS2 inferior to XBOX1, Wii Inferior to HD-Twins. Wii U inferior to PS4. All of Nintendo Handheld generations inferior to competition. Nintendo will drop the Wii U price like they did to 3DS and sales will explode.

It’s a good thing there’s a good 50-100 million core gamers then isn’t it? If the PS4 does just as well as the PS3, and there’s no reason to believe otherwise since the PS3 has been selling very well for the past 3 years (including the 2012 holiday season when it sold 7 million consoles in 2 months). It’s possible that Sony could completely screw up the PS4, but since the PS3 is making Sony about $2 billion dollars worth of profit every quarter I find it hard to believe that Sony is in any real danger with the PS4. It’ll sell well enough, it’ll make them a profit, there will be a PS5.

You’re looking at a new market that has a completely seperate demographic and you’re assuming that home consoles can’t make it in a “mobile” world. Except, the world isn’t really mobile. Mobile devices are useless for many, many things. You’ll always need a PC. Gamers will always want a dedicated game machine. They aren’t going away and there’s PLENTY of market out there for core gamers as the PS3 and XBox 360 have already proven. I’m so done with ignorant people who obviously have little interest in consoles pretending they know anything about the gamer demographic. You don’t. There are many people who will never find the same enjoyment from small scale mobile games that they do from a AAA console/PC game experience.

Consoles have been DOOMED every generation now. They still exist. Gamers aren’t going anywhere. You’re going to have to get over it. There’s actually a lot more core gamers this generation than there were last generation. Next generation will probably see an even greater rise. It’s crazy that people predict that consoles are going out of business when far more consoles and games sold this generation than last generation. The generation is ending. Console and game sales are down. They were at the end of last generation too. That’s how the market works. It’ll boost again a year after the PS4 and XBox 720 release. That’s how the market works. There’s really nothing else to say right now. This article is ridiculous.

it’s first party exclusives are the killer feature!!! It doesn’t need a second screen or kinect rip off, I cant wait to see what both consoles bring to the table game wise as at the end of the day that is what it is all about simple as that.

Here is where your argument fails. The reason the Wii sold so well was because it was AFFORDABLE. The only console of the three that sold for under $200. The Wii U was never going to appeal to the core gaming community because its games and graphics were that of the family type console, but lacked the family affordability.

The motion controller of the Wii was a fad. Something new that everybody wanted. And once they got tired of Wii Sports, you couldn’t sell a used one for over $125. Xbox and Playstation have a very dedicated core group of gamers, and regardless of the mobile gaming movement, core gamers will still always desire a controller in their hands. Which is why the Playstation and the Kinect have not been all that successful.